Fandom Promos

[galerian_ash]

Have you already decided what fandom(s) to write for? If so, how about doing a little promoting? :D

We've all chosen tiny obscure canons, needless to say. But by posting here you might be able to entice someone else to give it a try — or perhaps you'll even run into a fellow fan, who can't wait to read your coming fic.

Your promo can be long or short, and contain whatever you feel like. Want to post a couple of intriguing screencaps from a movie? Quote a few paragraphs from a book? Rec the best episode of an anime or a TV series? Talk about why you love your favorite character and/or pairing from your fandom? It's all good; anything goes!

Comments

[sunfright]

I'm writing for the tiniest, obscure little Danish poetry collection by Naja Marie Aidt and Mette Moestrup called Omina. Like, even in Denmark, this collection of poetry is obscure, although both authors are relatively well-known for other works.

Quoting the opening poems from the collection below, English translation by me and very unofficial, okay.

this will be about
doubt and this will
be a hammer
of burning steel

this will be about
the hardness of the heart
and this will be soft
as a severed breast

Through a series of mirrored poems, we follow the journey of the main dramatis personae, the Amazon, as she leaves behind the ghosts of her past to travel between battlefields, through forests and across mountains. Her only companions on this journey are her horse and her dog, otherwise she's alone, having said goodbye to her love under unknown circumstances. What she fights against is injustice and the power structures of society, though she fights by also killing innocents in cold blood. The collection portrays her journey, both the physical one and the emotional one.

The title of the book comes from Latin, it's the plural form of omen which means warning.



If anyone should be interested, I've translated the whole poetry collection into English and will share a link to the full (still, you know, very unofficial) translation if you poke me.

[flo_nelja]

This seems awesome!
(I'm interested in the translation)

[sunfright]

It is honestly the best poetry I have ever read! I love it so much.

I've sent you a PM, just as a heads up.

[flo_nelja]

Thank you again! I love it very much!

[sunfright]

So glad you enjoyed!

Would you mind if I friended you? I talk about a lot of other things, but I certainly also talk a lot about this particular writing project.

[flo_nelja]

Oh it would be nice!

Can I ask if, as a fanfic, you're writing poetry or prose?

[sunfright]

A bit of a mix, actually! I don't write in the concise, brief style of the original collection, but I'm writing a series of prose poems - so it's still poetry in some form.

[atamascolily]

The League of Peoples series by James Alan Gardner is a set of sci-fi novels from the late '90s and early '00s--each one is an independent story and can be read as a stand-alone, but there are a number of recurring characters and occasional references to the events of earlier installments. Each book is written in first person, with a strong narrative voice; there are lots of female characters, and several poly and queer relationships.

The premise is that humanity has finally spread out across the galaxy, but they aren't alone; the aforementioned League contains a wide range of sentient species, some of which are so advanced they might as well be gods. The number one rule of the League is extremely simple: "No dangerous non-sentient creature will ever be allowed to move from its home system to another star system"--and 'dangerous non-sentient' means any creature ready to kill a sentient creature or let a sentient creature die through inaction. No human understands how it works, but is so thoroughly and completely enforced, it might as well be a law of nature; if you attempt to jump to another system before/after committing murder, you will simply disappear en route.

Of course, humanity is still humanity, so you still have people being aggressive and stupid, it's just channeled into things other than outright wars.

The volume I'm focusing on for this challenge is Vigilant (1999), which follows Faye Smallwood, a human on the planet Demoth, as she copes with a fatal plague that is wiping out her non-human neighbors, the Oolom. (This was an intense sequence back in the day and is even more so post-2020.) A chance encounter with a dying Oolom woman named Zillif inspires Faye to eventually join the Vigil, a planet-wide watchdog organization dedicated to wiping our corruption. Members of the Vigil are implanted with a link-seed, a cybernetic implant that gives them access to a tremendous amount of data and resources that forces them to remain objective--but has the power to fry their minds if they misuse it. As someone starts assassinating her co-workers, Faye is caught up in a mystery involving a sentient rogue wormhole and the ancient civilization that manufactured the plague thousands of years earlier. Her allies are her crazy Oolom supervisor, a unexpectedly sentient AI, and Festina Ramos, the protagonist of previous volumes, who pops in unexpectedly when the larger human government beyond Demoth starts poking its nose in Faye's business.

All of the League of People novels I've read to date have been solid speculative space adventures with creative world-building and lots of snarky banter. Gardner has a real knack for introducing details early on that come back and smack you in the face before the end. I like them all, but Vigilant is my favorite because the institution of the Vigil is so fascinating and compelling, and we don't get to see as much of it as I'd like... hence the impetus to write fic for it. I find Faye and Zillif's relationship particularly moving, and I wonder what Faye's life might have looked like if Zillif had lived.

This series is out of print and fairly obscure; I've picked up my copies in used bookstores, but you can probably find it online as well.

[sweetsorcery]

I'm still weighing up a few options, but here's something I'll almost certainly tackle, because no one else ever will. I love my niche vintage horror fandoms to bits! :)

The Attic is a 1926 ghost story by A. M. Burrage.
Burrage has written some fantastic supernatural stories, as well as young adult fiction, and this story is kind of what might happen if P. G. Wodehouse had ventured into the horror genre. It has moments of humour, but it's also rather touching in parts, most notably in its portrayal of the relationship between two of the characters: Stanley Forbes visits a newly married friend in his country house, where both the friend and his wife firmly tell themselves the odd sounds they sometimes hear from the attic are quite natural. Also coming for a visit is the wife's younger brother, Derek Wilson, who's rather more sensitive than that but also courageous enough to investigate in the dead of night. This is something Forbes figures out after the fact, suitably impressed with the boy, because he himself is rather spooked by it all.

It turns out there's reason to be spooked when the house party starts to investigate into the past of the house as a school, run by a rather nasty character.

What strikes me most in this story is the lovely rapport Stanley and Derek have with each other, and Stanley's concern for Derek's feelings while everyone else thinks he's being rather difficult about staying in the house. (Derek does a temporary bunk.) There's a lot of hurt/comfort potential here, as well as post-canon possibilities, especially as Derek is only 15 in the canon.

This story is available in print and on Kindle, or you could do what's my favourite way to consume vintage horror and listen to this excellent audio reading of it! :)

[flowersforgraves]

I'm not sure these both (or either) will be finished by the time Be The First ends, but I'm writing a fic for the Avery Cates series by Jeff Somers, and for the War Dogs trilogy by Greg Bear.

Promo 1: Avery Cates, a killer for hire, accidentally-on-purpose becomes the most wanted man in the world in a post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk New York where you're either a cop or a criminal, a wealthy businessman or a beggar. The only reason he's survived this long is by being smart and not trusting anyone. You might like these books if you like asshole antihero protagonists, gratuitous violence, and grimy, dirty cyberpunk.

Promo 2: MSgt Michael Venn and his company are deployed to Mars, where they're fighting the Antagonists, a mysterious alien race bent on... something. All they know is that the Gurus, the hyperadvanced alien species that came to Earth a few years ago in order to give them tech to help them fight the Antags, are doing what they can to help humanity survive. (Or are they?) Venn's company is shot down before they can make landfall, and meet one of the early human settlers of Mars, Teal, who helps Venn and a few friends survive, but her help comes with a heavy pricetag that none of them -- Teal included -- know.

[adevyish]

I’ll be writing for Atom Boyz, a Taiwanese team-based idol competition show from last year. The entire thing is on Youtube. The show’s editors, unhappy with merely putting hearts around contestants, started soundtracking footage with romantic drama music and photoshopping fake BL drama promos. This being an 80-contestant show, I’m mostly going to focus on two specific groups. Ozone are the boy-next-door group with a dose of chaos. Vera were originally the flower boys group, but are now the sexy group that talks about their crushes on boys.

Anyway, I leave you with Vera’s Jhen performing in cat ear headphones.

[27twinsister]

I’ve already chosen TWO fandoms, and wrote tiny drabbles for both of them. I like making drabbles :).

The first is an app called Chuzzle 2. You know the old computer game/app Chuzzle? Yeah Chuzzle 2 is basically the same gameplay-wise, but as you play you can get puzzle pieces, and as you complete puzzles you can get pet chuzzles who live in your chuzzarium, and you have to feed them and can buy toys for them and stuff. They all have different names (given by the game, you don’t get to name them) and the ones with the strongest personalities (and the ones I chose to write about) are Stinky, Kittyball, and Squeakers. Stinky canonically has feelings for Kittyball and literally canonically hates everyone else. If I knew how to write an actual shipfic for them I would but they’re basically sentient balls of fluff so I struggle. (Human AU/Animal AU/etc wouldn’t be as interesting imo.) I also had to narrow down characters because Stinky Just Bullies Everyone Until Kittyball Shows Up *could* be a fanfic but like it would be kinda not fun and would get repetitive, so limiting it in wordcount made me actually, like, focus on just writing one instance.

Squeakers is also basically canonically neurodivergent, they make noise (vocal stims) and is kind of jumpy (in a good way) (I don’t know the word for this but it seems like a stim?) when they’re happy. Squeakers is also smaller than the average-sized chuzzles which means they’re baby. (None of the chuzzles have canon ages as far as I know.)

The second tiny fandom is a toyline called Pixel Chix from the 2000s. I saw a YouTube video by Izzzyzzz about it and vaguely remember having some of the toys as a kid, (particularly the Road Trippin' Car) so I decided to write about it (especially about the Road Trippin’ Car.) Pixel Chix’s main character doesn’t really have a name (old marketing called her either Pixel or Gal, I went with Pixel) and I wrote what is hopefully a very nostalgic drabble. I did find exactly one fanfic involving Pixel Chix on FFN, but it’s from like 2012 and that fandom isn’t the focus, and I couldn’t find any other fanfic about it.

I’m on my phone and don’t know how to format things, but maybe later I’ll edit and add links at least to the Izzzyzzz video.

[sheenianni]

I'm writing a short story for the indie game Eastshade. It's a soothing, peaceful experience with stunning visuals, a lot of exploration, great music, some puzzles and RPG and just so much "good feels"; it got me through some dark times during Covid. Basically, you're a painter who comes to the island of Eastshade to fulfill your mother's deathbed wish and paint some sceneries. And so you explore, meet people, paint whatever catches your fancy, drink teas, listen to stories, listen to music, paint some more, help people, admire the countryside, solve a mystery, drink more teas and then paint again, and don't pick this one plant because it's endangered! One of the most "Eastshade" things is a conversation you have with a blacksmith early-ish in the game - she'll sell you a kettle and a zip trolley but not a sword because they just don't do that there and why would you want to stab someone anyway? Not that there aren't conflicts or that all the people are nice - some are flat out jerks; they're people after all. It also has a small but positive LGBT subplot and I'm in love with it.

[marycrawford]

That sounds like such a good game, and very much my cup of tea, thanks for describing it so well! I'm adding it to my waitlist, seems like I just missed a steam sale.

[sheenianni]

You're welcome and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did :)

[justinedesade]

I’m writing for the movie PCU. PCU is a 1994 comedy film about the main character, Tom Lawrence, visiting Port Chester University for the first time, and seeing all the wackiness of the campus, from the liberal causeheads, to partiers The Pit, and to the conservative Balls and Shaft.
Rand McPherson, the main villain of the story, is the head of said conservative, outlawed fraternity Balls and Shaft.
As mentioned by his actor in behind-the-scenes interviews, Rand is a business major but doesn’t necessarily need to go to PCU as he is the heir to a Fortune 500 company.
Another hint at his backstory in the movie, is that during Droz’s, one of The Pit members, flashbacks, he was seen as being Droz’s roommate previously. It is implied Droz is one of the reasons Rand hates The Pit so much, besides it being against his conservative values, Droz treated Rand horribly as a roommate.
One of my favorite ships, whether romantic or platonic, is Tom and Rand. Tom’s an antithesis to Rand. Tom, like Rand, is also preppy, but unlike Rand, is sweet and wants to genuinely be nice to people, if a bit clumsy at times. Rand sees Tom as being a possible Balls and Shaft member, but ultimately Tom, after choosing to go to PCU, is implied to be joining The Pit when he comes to college.

[geri_chan]

I'm writing for the graphic novel My Aunt is a Monster by Reimena Yee. The official summary reads: "Safia thought that being blind meant she would only get to go on adventures through her audiobooks. This all changes when she goes to live with a distant and mysterious aunt, Lady Whimsy, who takes Safia on the journey of a lifetime!"

Safia has gone to live with her Aunt Whimsy after her parents died. Whimsy used to be a famous adventurer, but now lives in seclusion because on her last adventure, she was cursed into the form of a monster. Being blind, Safia is unaware of this, and lives happily with Whimsy and Whimsy's childhood nanny/housekeeper/assistant Cathryn, though she dreams of going on adventures like her aunt once did. She finally gets the chance when Whimsy's rival discovers the lost kingdom where Whimsy was cursed, and they must go to stop her before disaster strikes again.

The art is bright, colorful, and charming, and I love the eccentric Lady Whimsy in both her human and monster forms. Safia is also a wonderful character, and I love the way that she and Aunt Whimsy are both lonely and grieving, albeit for different reasons, and how they bond and truly become a family.

I also love Whimsy's rival, Dr. Professor Cecilia Choi, aka the Pineapple Tart (so nicknamed because of her favorite dessert). In the flashbacks to the beginnings of their childhood rivalry, Whimsy regards the Tart as her nemesis, but Cecilia seems quite smitten with Whimsy, and I'm hoping to expand on their relationship in my fic.

It's a great adventure story, while also being humorous and whimsical, and at the same time touching and emotional when it comes to the relationships between the various characters.

It's available in print and ebook formats, and you can read the summary and see a few sample pages at the author's website.

[flo_nelja]

I have finally decided that I would write for one of my favorite obscure fairy tales, "The Green Mountain". There's another version called "Jean the Soldier and Eulalie the devil's daughter". None of them have an AO3 tag.

In this tale the hero is sent to the devil, must accomplish impossible tasks, fortunately the youngest of the devil's daughters has a crush on him and helps him.
She's a powerful magician with no idea of what is normal (one of her "helps" starts with "you have to boil me into a cauldron" I love her)

Here is a version on my journal : https://flo-nelja.dreamwidth.org/735435.html